Regarding text editing, my problem is that whenever I'm using the internet I'm using a computer lab or terminal so I can't install any software such as Moonedit. I don't know whether or not that would make incorporating stuff I contribue more trouble than it's worth or not, but if you still want me to write up textual descriptions for new items (such as NIJ rated body armor) I'd be perfectly happy to do so the old fashioned way; via email or posting the descs to this forum for general review/copying and pasting. Let me know because I just want to help, so whether you want me to write something or not is perfectly okay with me either way.

Random question: is the "flak jacket" supposed to be a Vietnam war era ballistic nylon vest which, I've been told my an Army sergant, didn't even stop handgun rounds but was only effective against shrapnel?

Hyzmarca: do you think it would be cool and realistic to replace the "rocket rifles" with those gyrojet weapons you linked to? Maybe make them extremely accurate at distance and on autofire but tone down the damage a little. I don't know how you could simulate their suckitude at close range; maybe that isn't necessary for the gyrojet rifles rather than the Rocketeer pistol.


EDIT:

Check it out, someone's Vietnam account of carrying a gyrojet weapon.

Basically, if we have to do our parts separately, I have to wait for Austere to completely finalize the stuff he's doing with the weapons (I think he said he was fixing damage and rates of fire). Then I have to go in and fix ranges and capacities, which is a bitch. Then I have to pass the files on to you for descriptions. It isn't that it's not worth the trouble, but it does dramatically slow down the process, and if Austere or I has second thoughts about some values, we have to wait to get the files back to fix anything. On top of this, if anyone else wants to do something, it's another person on the chain and it basically just slows things down further.

Are you not able to install programs or are you not able to run anything? I could just send you the necessary MoonEdit files (it's basically just the executible, and if you're able to download that and run it, you should be fine. Provided we can get a server, anyway. Unfortunately, there's no way I can provide that.

As for the flak jacket, I think they are supposed to represent Vietnam era flak jackets. The flak jackets in the game certainly don't stop even the weakest pistol rounds.

If the rocket rifles are staying in Realistic mode, it would make sense to change them to Gyrojets. I just don't like the idea of having them in at all. I'm not sure one's ever even seen combat.

Yeah, it's distributed in an installer, but the actual program is a standalone .exe. Provided we can get a server, I can attach it an email it to you.

[edit]

Can't sleep. Sphinx'll eat me.

Heh heh, Hyzmarca injects social satire into JA2. Too bad we can't re record lines.

Deidranna: "NOOOO I'm out of rockets forever. Time to run!"



Another topic: the more I read about armor on wikipedia the more I'm convinced it makes less sense to call the items "zylon vest" or "spectra vest" and more to just have the items be specific products, such as "flak jacket", "interceptor armor", (whatever preceeded the interceptor armor that didn't stop rifle rounds), and "dragon skin armor". Thoughts?

They say that on Friday they're gonna release a big patch. Maybe it would make sense to see the updates the patch made and then revise those? Just a thought.

Since I'm a day ahead of the US I'll probably have to get to the console on Sunday or something to be sure that I can download this update.

Unless I've misread, the patch is basically what's already available on the SVN, which Austere's been working from and which I just got and have been poking around with. I'm guessing you haven't seen that, yet, though, given your connection situation. Pulling it file by file would basically take you as long as waiting for Sunday.

The patch is a major improvement in a lot of areas, but a lot of things still don't make sense and need fixing. Still, probably would be best to wait for the patch to actually hit before getting involved in development of any kind over there.

************!

ADSL modem blew up during a thunderstorm, been offline pretty much since my last post here.

Sooo...
First of all, playing through the game, I've been noticing a lot of stuff that I shouldn't've changed before seeing what the item actually looks and behaves like in-game -- for example, I had no idea which weapons were supposed to have in-built foregrips, bipods, reflex sights, etc. etc.

Also, I pretty much have to do the whole thing all over again anyway, because for some reason the ammunition thing has caused all weapons which are fed from magazines that come after the newly introduced "flechette" shotgun ammo in Magazines.xml to be fed with "Nada" instead when dropped by enemies, and some of those weapons thereafter always produce a "Nada" object when their ammo is ejected. I have no idea what causes this, because I quintuple-checked all the ammo references and they're correct. Oh well.

So, uhh, yeah, I think I'll wait a moment as well, then I'll try and work through the changes logically so I don't have to do patch-up jobs like last time.

BTW, I don't mind workind with any items -- from weapons to ammo to armor to explosives and so on -- so if any of you'd like to work with specific item(/file) groups, let me know and I won't edit those without telling you about it.

[Edit]Wounded Ronin: I noticed you asked about the "gory death" thing: there is an actual attribute for that in Weapons.xml called "<MaxDistForMessyDeath>", and it is indeed 7 for most weapons. If you want to make sure you get lots of gore, run a find/replace in that file, replacing "</MaxDistForMessyDeath>" with "00</MaxDistForMessyDeath>". [/Edit]

Hell, I'm just trying to figure out something I can do besides occasional commentary. I've been moving from an apartment to a house, and (hopefully) will be done by midnight tonight. After that, I'm not sure life gets any more sane, but it's worth a shot...

If we're basically back to the beginning, I think we should get a thread started over there letting them know what we have in mind and basically just asking how to get involved. Doing stuff individually just seems like a great way to end up with either obsolete or non working code, given the speed of their updates. New release is just about here, so now seems as good a time as any.

Yeah, as soon as I can wrap my head around everything I would like to change and why, I'll start a general thread for that sorta thing over there. I don't want to simply start listing everything I disagree with in all the xml's, because nobody is going to want to read that. Anyone who can put the general idea into words is free to start a thread there, of course. I doubt our opinions about the issues or what we'd like to see changed are too varied.

Right now, it doesn't seem to good, what with the person in charge of weapon stats convinced that Tres Haute Vitesse, SS190 and Glaser rounds perform as well as or better than JHPs against unarmored humans.

I guess once it's gone subsonic or nearly so, the brain splatter will not be as pronounced as it is at 3000fps. But judging by the material at Ogrish.Com I'd say shattering the target's skull should be trivial at several hundred meters.

I might suggest to them something along the lines of making "baseline" P90 ammunition their "AP", with the hollowpoint P90 ammo being treated as "ball." If there's some super-AP version of 5.7x28mm, that can be their "XAP" ammo. Then, just tweak the damage numbers down somewhat.

That's basically what's already done with rifles. The standard ammo is AP, which sort of doesn't make sense, but is better than treating standard rifle ammo the same way pistol FMJ is treated. Ideally, I'd like to have rifle ball treated the way AP is now, but also have genuine rifle AP in the game.

In any case, yeah, definitely makes sense to treat SS190 ball as AP. There's no "XAP" or "super-AP" version of the 5.7x28mm roung that I know of, though. Then again, the game probably has 5.7x28mm glasers that I just haven't seen yet...

Also, I'll get that thread up tonight over there to at least get things going. Details can follow.

Thing is, as it is, AP, XAP and Ball do the exact same damage to unarmored targets, the only thing that changes is the armor modifier (and object modifier and some other crap).

However, I emphatically agree that some sort of revision of the way the ammo types are used would be nice. With potentially dozens of different ammo types, every single caliber could be tuned to have specific effects against armor and tissue with specific loads. There's no real need for pistol-caliber AP-rounds to be treated the same as assault rifle FMJs.

If I read some of their forum stuff correctly, their AP ammo worked in a similar fashion to the CP2020 AP... that is, it reduced armor but reduced damage, as well. If that's not the case, there'd be no advantage to choosing ball over AP? Hm...

The advantages of the different ammo types are laid out here, and you can check them for yourself in the Ammotypes.xml (or something like that) in your Data1.13(?)/Tabledata folder. Ball, AP and XAP all do 1x damage both before and after armor. Freakishly, cold-loaded Ball, AP and XAP retain the full armor piercing capability of the basic types, only suffering from a 0.95x (or something like that) damage modifier after armor has been checked.

This is among the first things I changed.

That gave me an idea for the best game ever.

Contra: Che

Final boss: Bolivian army.

"This game is fucking impossible!"

Anyway, on topic, I was going to get that thread started, but I've been noticing a lot of resistance in threads started by Ronin and (I think) Austere. Some people are open to reasonable discussion, but a few might as well still believe in fairies for all I can tell. And hydrostatic shock... augh.

The main problem is that as the mod is structure now, it is ironically impossible to make a mod that remain relevant for any amount of time. Not to mention that these sorts of changes for realism quite bluntly belong in the core release, because if their intent was to keep the game unrealistic and silly, they've gotten pretty far from JA2's level of Silly Shit. Of course, they've created new problems with glasers and whatever the hell AET is, but I get the feeling this is because a lot of them think that's actually real.

Reverse Ogive bullets are occasionally also described as 'AET'. Here's some photos. They cause all sorts of feed problems, and I doubt they produce the magic bullet effects people sometimes attribute to them, but there you go.

I also notice from reading the link that glaser safety slugs have spent time in the same extra angry furnace used to dikote things.

And they are describing the projectiles from the rocket rifles as proximity fused?!

Yeah, from Austere's post, I realized AET was supposed to be reverse ogive. Would never have guessed from their ingame description.

Really, I had some hope for this project, but after their gun "experts" basically threw a fit and took their ball and went home, I'm not so sure.

BTW, I managed to get all the ammo, etc., to work with the newest version properly. The xml's I've edited are all here. I guess I better continue the EnemyGunChoices.xml further now that I've got Grumm and am seeing more and more dudes with XM-25s loaded with thermobaric 25mms...

[Edit]Done, EnemyGunChoices extended all the way through to the ultraelite options and tweaked EnemyItemChoices a bit.[/Edit]

You could always fork the project.

~J

Possible, but there's a lot of trouble in that, starting with the fact that their project isn't anywhere near done, which means a lot of stuff is still hardcoded and needs to be externalized. On top of this, the monthly updates are fairly dramatic, and any hope of maintaining a mod running parallel is, if not futile, at least destined for a lot of unnecessary pain.

And honestly, theses are changes that simply belong in the mod.

Well, fuck me with a "bloody throwing knife". I played my June release version of 1.13 all weekend only to find that in most of the Meduna sectors the game would CTD every time the enemy troops saw my guys. I don't know whether this is a 1.13 thing or a JA2 general thing, because I also had problems in vanilla JA2 with CTD in the Meduna sectors. Have any of you had Meduna stability issues? I'm about to go and check to see if the new update is available and I'm just gonna get that and hope that Meduna is magically more stable in it.

i've had crash problems pretty much throughout the game. sometimes, going back to an earlier save helps, sometimes not. the crash issues are why, despite playing it many times, i've never actually beaten JA2.

I'm willing to bet they will never "finish" it. It seems much more likely the development team will disintegrate before they all agree they're done with the project. Unless that's what you meant.

Anyhow, since one kind soul coded an armor coverage check into the code and externalized that stat for all body armor, I'll just go ahead and edit everything to my own preference and if new versions require lots of work to keep those tweaks I'll simply not update.

All the things I'm modifying are in the Data-1.13/TableData folder. The xmls I've done major editing in can be found here -- though they might not be compatible with older ja2.exe revisions, and some (Armours, Items) will be updated shortly as I finish this coverage thing.

I'm not sure if it's fair for me to ask for descriptions from others when I've statted the objects myself -- I remember what all the armor, for example, is supposed to be like and I can almost remember how I statted it, but someone else would have to cross-check all that info between the xmls.

On the other hand, I am going to try and take university seriously when the new term begins, in... uh oh, it's 1:25 AM, so about 33 hours. After that I might not have the energy to mess with any of the descriptions.

Well, it only took the split into wood, urban and desert camo and the introduction of a few new guns, one new ammo type, and some misc gear to require a dozen or so hours' work to get the xmls updated, and I'm not sure how many times I'm going to want to do that.

I should try and open a thread for all of my preferred tweaks tomorrow on those forums, and if people aren't interested I'll just keep playing with them by myself.

If you don't mind cross-checking the xmls, I will gladly let you have the pleasure of writing the descriptions.

Right now, what would most profit from good descriptions is the armor, ie. ubItemClass 2048 in Items.xml. The ubClassIndex of all 2048-class items in Items.xml points to that armor's uiIndex in Armours.xml. All that the descriptions need are quick notes on protective level -- I'm thinking ubProtection (found in Armours.xml) 25 is around NIJ level II, 28 NIJ level III-A (or 23/26 for leggins/helmets, because even a little bit of blunt trauma can be a bit more nasty on your shin or forehead), etc. -- how restricting the armor is -- based on the AimBonus and APBonus (penalties) given in Items.xml for each item -- and what its coverage is (ubCoverage in Armours.xml).

After that you can go wild with them. I don't mind if you end each description with "KE KE KE KE KE ROFL!" as long as I don't have to write them. And just getting the non-coated or treated basic armors out of the way would be a huge help -- I don't think we need to bother with the more exotic armor.

[Edit]Oh, right, the files. Items.xml and Armours.xml. These two should not cause any real trouble even if you copy them directly to your own Data-1.13/TableData folder, but just to be on the safe side you might want to keep them separate until you get the newer revision.[/Edit]

Let me make sure I understand what I need to do. I need to go through Items.xml and Armours.xml and, in both files, insert a description that ubProtection 25 is NIJ level II, that 28 is NIJ level III-A on the body and 23 and 26 for the head and legs respectively.

Next, the bigger the AimBonus and APBonus numbers given in Items.xml, the more bulky I say the item is.

After that, I check ubCoverage in Armours.xml and...do I go with the description here?

http://www.ja-galaxy-forum.com/forums/ulti...c;f=20;t=000082

The descriptions (szItemDesc is the general one and szBRDesc is for Bobby Ray's) only appear in Items.xml, so you won't actually need to edit Armours.xml at all. Unless you find something about it that you don't like.

As far as I'm concerned, Bobby Ray's and the general descriptions can be the exact same text. Unclear BR descriptions are a bit of a pain if you don't know what the item does.

AimBonus and APBonus for the armors are all negative numbers, unless I've fucked up, but yeah, the more negative the values are (the bigger the penalties), the bulkier you can describe them.

For the coverage, you can just wing it -- I changed the coverage figures from the ones Captain J describes in that thread. For example, since most helmets range from 65 to 75, the 65 probably looks like this while the 75 is more like this. The same thing with the vests -- lowest coverages are concealables that might not even have ballistic protection on the shoulders, while the highest are tactical outer vests with high neck cover, groin protectors and even upper arm sleeves. With leggins, the lower ones are like these, the higher more like these. Or if you feel like it, just write down the percentage value -- we've got the images for visuals anyway.

Great. I'll try and snag the files sometime today, then. When I'm done editing, what's the best way for me to get them back to you?

Humm. I'll PM my email to you, if your email can handle a 4.4meg attachment.

Do you still need me to go over gun stats to fix ranges and rofs? Or anything else, for that matter?

I can't say need -- if you aren't planning on using the xmls yourself I wouldn't dream of asking you to do it. But if you're interested, go ahead. It would make the whole thing a bit more sensible for players other than me.

The files are now all available here, including the version of ja2.exe with the coverage function coded in by Captain J (this will probably be updated in the near future). If anyone's interested in modding it but doesn't have a handy place to put up the files, sign up at wikispaces.com and either ask for membership at ja2dumpshock.wikispaces.com or create a new one. I'll check the MoonEdit thing tomorrow.

Yeah, that'd be safest. There could be trouble using the new exe with old files. To be absolutely sure, it might be a good idea not to overwrite, even, and just rename the newest unmodded exe